I would like to say that this could have happened only in Arkansas, but that isn’t true. Watch how the Court twisted itself into a pretzel in its determines effort to make Wells Fargo win despite admitting to unlawfully altering the note by a forged endorsement.

I note also how the court steadfastly avoids the subject of ownership of the debt and clings to the notion that ownership of the note — i.e., the piece of paper that is EVIDENCE OF THE LOAN — is as deep as the court is willing to go.

Mnuchin’s lies to the U.S. Senate are only symptomatic of the continuous stream of lies producing a new normal of bank arrogance and the continuing push to foreclose on homeowners as a means to gain illicit profits. Perhaps the flagrancy of his lies will awaken lawmakers to the fact that the entire financial system has a growing cancer caused by indifference to the crimes of the banks and resulting damage to tens of millions of Americans.

The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday that Mnuchin denied in written responses to questions from the Senate Finance Committee that OneWest engaged in so-called robo-signing of mortgage documents.

The paper said its analysis of nearly four dozen foreclosure cases in Ohio’s Franklin County in 2010 showed that the bank “frequently used robo-signers.”

The practice, prevalent throughout the mortgage industry in the aftermath of the financial crisis, involved employees at financial firms signing foreclosure documents en masse without properly reviewing them.

Democrats sharply criticized Mnuchin during his Jan. 19 confirmation hearing concerning OneWest’s foreclosures while he ran the Pasadena bank from 2009 to 2015. They called the institution, which formerly had been troubled subprime lender IndyMac Bank, “a foreclosure machine.”

“Mnuchin ran a bank that was notorious for aggressively foreclosing on homeowners, and now he’s lying about his bank’s dismal track record in his official responses to the Finance Committee,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Monday. “Working families simply cannot trust him to be the country’s top economic official.”

What is unique and instructive about this decision from the Montana Supreme Court is that it gives details of each and every fraudulent, wrongful and otherwise illegal acts that were committed by a self-proclaimed servicer and the “defective” trustee on the deed of trust.

You need to read the case to see how many different times the same court in the same case awarded damages, attorney fees and sanctions against Bayview who persisted in their behavior even after the judgment was entered.

This case overall stands for the proposition that the violations of federal law by self proclaimed servicers, trusts, trustees, substituted trustees, etc. are NOT insignificant or irrelevant. The consequences of merely applying the law in a fair and balanced way could and should be devastating to the TBTF banks, once the veil is pierced from servicers like Bayview, Ocwen et al and the real players are revealed.

I offer the following for legal practitioners as a checklist of issues that are usually present, in one form or another, in virtually all foreclosure cases and the consequences to the bad actors when the law is actually applied. The interesting thing is that this checklist does not just represent my perspective. It comes directly from the Jacobson decision by the high court in Montana. That decision should be read, studied and analyzed several times. You need to read the case to see how many different times the same court in the same case awarded damages, attorney fees and sanctions against Bayview who persisted in their behavior even after the judgment was entered.

One additional note: If you think about it, you can easily see how this case represents the overall infrastructure employed by the super banks. It is obvious that all of Bayview’s actions were at the behest of Citi, who like any other organized crime figure, sought to avoid getting their hands dirty. The self proclamations inevitably employ the name of US Bank whose involvement is shown in this case to be zero. Nonetheless the attorneys for Bayview and Peterson sought to pile up paper documents to create the illusion that they were acting properly.

THE GOAL IS TO SHOW THAT THE ABSENCE OF A TRANSACTION, NOTWITHSTANDING THE REFERENCE IN A DOCUMENT.

While the defective notarization does not itself invalidate the document, it certainly suggests questions about how that happened and then to question whether the same thing happened with other documents or endorsements. If you can cast sufficient doubt as to the trustworthiness of documents (and the party proffering it to the Court) of then the laws of evidence require that the proffering party actually prove the transaction instead of having the Court presume that the transaction referenced in a document actually existed.

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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Whether an instrument is notarized or not it is still valid between the parties to the instrument. So a mortgage for instance is required to be notarized only to get it recorded, which is for the protection of the lender and not for the protection of the debtor. Whether it was recorded or not the mortgage becomes enforceable when it is signed.

So the problem is this: if the notary’s commission expired, then the instrument was not properly “RECORDED”. Theoretically there is an academic argument to challenge the procedural legitimacy of a foreclosure if the notary was forged or expired. But as a practical matter nothing changes in the end. However, if some judge is convinced that not having recorded it in county records means that the lien was not perfected, it could cause substantial delays in the process.

BUT all that said, the use of a notary that has expired suggests that the notary was robosigned. AND robosigning could be evidence that other documents are robosigning, which is a form of forgery. And robosigning itself suggests the possibility or even likelihood of fabrication of documents including the note, assignments, endorsements etc. CAUTION: You cant just say it. You most prove the possibility or even probability of forgery, fabrication and robo-signing.

Establishing relevant and sincere doubt is easier than proving the “defense” of defective instruments etc.

If the robo-signing and fabrication issue are properly highlighted at trial or in motions THEN you have cast doubt on the trustworthiness of all the documents (or at least the ones where robo-signing and forgery are put into question). THAT in turn suggests that legal presumptions arising from the apparent facial validity of an instrument would not apply. Check the laws of your state.

In Florida once sufficient doubt is cast upon the trustworthiness of the documents, the documents are no longer sufficient to prove the truth of the matter asserted — i.e., in a note that money was loaned to the homeowner, in an assignment that the debt was sold (not just a sale of the paper instrument). This would require the the party proffering said documents to go in reverse, which we are very confident they cannot do — i.e., they must first establish the transaction and then prove that the instrument is an accurate reflection of the actual financial transaction.

There is no “prejudice” to a foreclosing party if they must prove up the transactions, since they are asserting that those transactions occurred anyway. What has changed is that instead of presuming and assuming the transactions shown on the documents were real, they must simply prove that the transaction occurred by showing delivery of money in exchange for the note, or money in exchange for the assignment or money in exchange for the endorsement.

Pennymac tried to outwit the court system, succeeding at the trial level and then failing on appeal. The simple fact is that it is a rare instance where a party can lose a lawsuit based upon a forged instrument. The court will (and should) always find a way to deny such relief.

Simple case. Closing attorney still had copy of the note — 5 pages. Pennymac sued on a 6 page note. Defendants denied that the note was real and denied they signed the document upon which Pennymac was relying. Pennymac said that Florida statutes required Defendants to file a cause of action to get rid of a forged document. The trial court agreed. The appellate court said no, the authenticity of the document and the signature is put in play once it is apparent to all that this the gravamen of the defense.

In an action with respect to an instrument, the authenticity of, and authority to make, each signature on the instrument is admitted unless specifically denied in the pleadings. If the validity of a signature is denied in the pleadings, the burden of establishing validity is on the person claiming validity, but the signature is presumed to be authentic and authorized unless the action is to enforce the liability of the purported signer and the signer is dead or incompetent at the time of trial of the issue of validity of the signature.

Pennymac Trust likens the statute’s passing reference to “specifically” denying a signature’s authenticity to the specificity required to plead a cause of action for fraud under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.120(b): “In all averments of fraud or mistake, the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake shall be stated with such particularity as the circumstances may permit.”

So as long as you don’t contest the signature specifically there is an iron clad presumption that you signed it. If the facts fit, then deny or set forth an answer or affirmative defense that specifically denies you signed it. But the word of caution here is that denying it doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have some pretty hard evidence, like this case, that shows that the document and/or the signature is not authentic. In this case the proof was straightforward.

BUT notice that the obvious nature of the forgery, fraud upon the court still somehow managed to escape the Plaintiff Pennymac and the attorneys for Pennymac. I wonder when someone important will look at that and say that is not the way to practice law.

So for the people who are unemployed due to a recession that won’t really quit until the money stolen from the system is somehow replaced or clawed back, you have a job waiting for you if you can sleep at night knowing that if your activities are exposed, the bank will disavow your “irresponsible” actions, leaving you exposed to jail or prison.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

Every Bubble Bursts. The banks are now struggling to find people who will “find” nonexistent documents without expressly telling their superiors at the bank that the “found” documents were fabricated. The evidence is all over the internet as banks troll for prospective employees who will get their hands dirty and be prepared to get thrown under the bus should the malfeasance be discovered.

The documents are not merely missing. They do not exist. And without the critical documents required in every foreclosure, there can be no foreclosure. The documents must be fabricated because they don’t exist. The documents don’t exist because they were actually intentionally destroyed and because the banks have no interest in the property, the alleged loan, the “original” note (“missing” in most cases), the mortgage or the debt itself. Many documents existed but were destroyed by the banks.

If pushed to open their books we would find a complete absence of any financial transaction in which the banks or their pet trusts were involved. Up until recently the banks were able to get their employees to execute documents that were fabricated for the purposes of presentation in court. But the number of people who are willing to do that is diminishing. Bank employees sense the impending disaster for the banks and they don’t want to take the blame even if it costs them their job.

The entire bank scheme, as I previously reported, is based upon the ability to use legal presumptions. These presumptions create an opportunity for epic fraud and theft. If a document is facially valid, the burden shifts to the homeowner to rebut the presumption that it is indeed a valid, authentic document. But now homeowners are hiring forensic document examiners who are showing that the document presented is not the original even if it looks that way. More and more homeowners, when presented with a “blue ink” document will say they don’t know if that particular signature is their own signature because they know that the documents and signatures are being fabricated. The bank’s witness in court is treading the fine line between ignorance and perjury when they say that the note is the original. The same holds true to bogus assignments, indorsements (“endorsements”), powers of attorney and other documents the banks use to avoid being required to prove their case without the presumptions.

So the banks, without using their own names, are posting job openings for what 4closurefraud.com calls “time travelers.” People get hired for their willingness to create documents that appear to have been prepared and executed years ago. This is required because if there was no transaction years ago, then the sham is exposed — the “loan contract” between the homeowner and the originator never existed. And so when the originator endorses or assigns the note or mortgage to an undisclosed third party, the assignment is completely and irrevocably void as coming from an entity that never owned the loan but was merely named as the Payee or Mortgagee.

BUT if the original loan documents look valid, and the alleged transfers of the loan look valid, then the burden shifts to the homeowner to rebut the presumption that a real transaction took place between the homeowner and the originator and between the originator and the next party in the false chain of possession and ownership of the loan. This is why I have been relentless in insisting that discovery take place and be pursued aggressively. I have already seen many cases in which an order was entered requiring the banks to respond to discovery requests; in virtually all cases someone steps forward and settles with the homeowner. The only exceptions are where it is clear that the judge is going to rule for the banks anyway and will deny subsequent motions to compel the discovery that was previously ordered.

Of course the problem with the settlement is that the homeowner is being coerced into accepting a settlement that acknowledges some bank, servicer or trustee as actually having rights to collect or enforce the loan; since these parties are merely intermediaries who issue self-serving paper designating themselves as real parties in interest, such settlements could result in the homeowner being presented with claims later from the real source of funding in their loan. This is unlikely, but nonetheless possible. The only reason it is unlikely is that the real parties in interest are investors whose money was commingled with thousands of other investors in hundreds of trusts that never received any proceeds from their offering of mortgage backed securities that were neither mortgage backed or securities. The investors need a way to trace their money into the loans or, if they elect not to do so, to settle with the bank that cheated them in the first place with bogus mortgage bonds. There have been many such settlements, most of them unreported.

The fact remains that the “lender” is never part of any documented transaction. Hence the “lender” (the investors) enjoy none of the protections of a holder of a note nor the security of a mortgage. Fabricating documents and forging them is the only way of breathing life into the false loan contract that was documented, even if it never happened. And borrowers and their attorneys should take note that the entire loan infrastructure is an illusion that has been awarded judgments that pretend the illusion is real. we are either a nation of laws or a nation of men. Our Constitution makes us a nation of laws. This is our challenge. Do we allow bankers and politicians to turn back time on paper and treat them as though they are doing something right because NOW it is right because they declared it right, or do we reject that and apply rules of law that have existed for centuries for this very reason.

So for the people who are unemployed due to a recession that won’t really quit until the money stolen from the system is somehow replaced or clawed back, you have a job waiting for you if you can sleep at night knowing that if your activities are exposed, the bank will disavow your “irresponsible” actions, leaving you exposed to jail or prison.

On November 20, 2012, Lorraine O’Reilly Brown, the former president of mortgage-document mill, DocX, LLC, a subsidiary of Lender Processing Services, pleaded guilty in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud. DocX produced over one million mortgage assignments. These assignments were used in foreclosures across the country. Brown admitted that she knew that these assignments were being prepared to use in foreclosures.

In tens of thousands of cases, these fraudulent documents were used by mortgage-backed trusts to show that the trust acquired a mortgage. The information on these assignments was false – the trusts did not acquire the mortgages on the date set forth on these DocX Assignments.

Signatures were forged, notarizations were wrongly added to create an appearance of authenticity. Job titles were falsely claimed.

Which trusts used these phony DocX-prepared mortgage assignments? The trusts that used these Mortgage Assignments to foreclose include those listed below, with the name of the trustee following the name of the trust.